The fight in the Governor’s man-cave alone was worth the price of admission, as they say, to tonight’s episode of The Walking Dead.

It was one of the best sequences yet in this show, and the image of the Governor, a shard of glass sticking out of his eye, cradling his now-really-dead zombie daughter, crying uncontrollably amid the severed zombie heads that came crashing out of his fish tanks as Andrea looks on in baffled amazement, well, it may be just enough to satisfy fans until February.

The Walking Dead may not get any attention from the Emmy crowd, but, really, could anything on Mad Men top that? There has never been a better show this demented, gory, unpredictable and absolutely gripping. This show is over the top nuts, and that’s why fans love it.

Part of that is because, to some extent, everybody on The Walking Dead is nuts. How could they not be? Society has collapsed around them. Everybody they’ve ever known in their entire lives has turned into ravenous, flesh-eating zombies. They’ve been living in a waking nightmare for more than a year now. There’s no place to recharge their iPhones.

Once you realize this, almost everything on the show starts to make sense, and not just obvious stuff like Rick talking to his dead wife on a dead rotary phone, or the Governor combing his dead zombie daughter’s hair. (It doesn’t explain all the decisions of the writers of the show, but at least it gives them a creative out.)

Like the decision to send four people to assault a heavily armed, fortified town, and leaving a ten-year old kid to look after the Grimes Clan at the prison.

That is where tonight’s episode, “Made to Suffer,” finds the survivors, although it gives us an immediate surprise by opening on another group of survivors, led by Tyreese (apparently a big fan-favorite from the comics) fighting off a zombie attack in the woods, and taking refuge in what turns out to be the West Georgia Correctional Facility.

More survivors! It’s a big plot turn, but it’s only one of the strands to follow; there’s the attempt to rescue Glenn and Maggie, Michonne’s attempt to kill that “Jim Jones type,” the Governor, Andrea’s night of surprises, and even Carol keeping Axel the convict (well, guess they’re all ex-cons now) from getting too close to young Beth.

The character who gets put through the wringer the most, though, is Andrea. The episode begins with her still smiling, playing the Ozzie and Harriett fantasy game with the Governor (or Phillip, as she alone knows). By the end, she’s seen the insanity inside Phillip’s man-cave, had a perilous stand-off with her old partner Michonne, and realized that the crew she used to run with is still around.

Most of the episode revolves around the attempt to rescue Maggie and Glenn from Woodbury, under cover of dark and a bunch of smoke grenades. Michonne leads Rick, Daryl, and Oscar inside the town walls, and they start scurrying around Woodbury’s safe rooms.

Glenn and Maggie are being held in the same room with the now-really-dead walker Merle threw in there, waiting for their fate. “All this time running from walkers,” Maggie says, “You forgot what people can do.” Yes, people can do terrible things, too. How soon you forget.

They’re prepared to die, but not to go out meekly. Glenn literally tears an arm off the walker, rips it in half, and hands Maggie a piece of bone (looked like both the radius and ulna). When Merle comes for them, there’s a struggle, Maggie stabs one henchman in the neck, and gunfire that attracts Rick’s team.

They swoop in just before Merle can execute Maggie and Glenn, fight off the Woodbury heavies, and run off to an empty storefront along Woodbury’s main street. While holed up, Glenn tells Daryl that his brother, Merle, was the one that beat them, and was going to execute them. The shock at learning his brother’s alive lasts only about 30 seconds. “I need you,” Rick says, and that’s that. Daryl’s in the Grimes Clan.

They throw a few more smoke grenades out the door and make a break for it right down the main street in a running gun fight. There’s much confusion, Daryl disappears, Oscar is shot (and then mercy-shot by Maggie), Michonne is nowhere to be found.

While Rick is trying to get Maggie and Glenn out, we are treated to one of the best sequences yet in this show. Michonne breaks in the Governor’s apartment, intent on killing him, and waits. After being there only a few minutes she hears a thudding sound from inside his man-cave (and how come Andrea never did?) She breaks in to find things that shock even her: the wall of fish tanks with zombie heads in them, and Penny, the Governor’s little zombie daughter, chained up, covered up and caged up.

Penny has a sack over her head, and her arms are bound. Michonne assumes she’s a captive, and attempts to free her. She takes the sack off to find a zombie, but before she can put her sword through her, the Governor barges in. He stands there, gun in his shaking hand, and like any loving father, concerned only for his daughter.

“There’s no need for her to suffer,” he says, and we have to take a moment here to laud David Morrissey, who plays the Governor. Morrissey does a tremendous job bringing to life what is one deliciously complicated villain.

He’s not just cartoon, black-and-white evil. He’s capable of murdering an entire National Guard unit. But he’s also just a desperate father trying to save his daughter’s life. Morrissey sells both sides of the Governor. Hope he sticks around longer than Dale did.

“She doesn’t have needs,” Michonne says, and puts her sword right through the back of Penny’s head. The fight that follows is brutal, the Governor gets a glass shard shoved in his eye, and Michonne would have killed him, but Andrea burst in, gun drawn. The two former partners in the wild stare at each other, barrel-to-sword tip, before Michonne just walks off.

We’ve been waiting for Andrea to discover Phillip’s dark secrets. As he sits there, cradling his now-really-dead zombie daughter with his bloody glass-filled eye, crying like any father would, Andrea takes in the whole demented scene: the zombie heads lying on the floor like gasping fish, her battered lover and his little zombie. Woodbury’s not exactly what Andrea thought it was.

The Governor, now with only one good eye, decides to sacrifice Merle. He calls the town’s residents to the zombie arena, lit in the dark by torches, and tells them something: he’s afraid. He’s afraid because there are people, terrorists, out there who want what they have in Woodbury.

He says Merle was in on the attack, was working with…his brother! Daryl is dragged into the arena, and the Dixon brothers stand there as the bloodthirsty crowd calls for their death. None of them have ever seen Daryl, or care, except for Andrea, of course, who upon seeing Daryl is presented one more surprise in a night full of them for her.

This was the so-called mid-season finale, so now Deadheads you’ve got a few months to, um, kill; the show returns in February, and you don’t have many options.

There aren’t any webisodes in the works (we asked AMC), although if you haven’t seen them yet, they’re worth the time. Brad Pitt’s World War Z apparently isn’t coming until June (and doesn’t look like it’ll be worth the wait, judging by the trailer.) The folks who’re making the upcoming Warm Bodies movie seem to have missed a chance here. Their zombie flick doesn’t come until the beginning of February.

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